Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!lll-winken!ames!haven!h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu!muvms3!edm002 From: edm002@muvms3.bitnet Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Chess, Reductionism, Probablistic Determinism. Message-ID: <15855@muvms3.bitnet> Date: 10 Apr 90 16:11:47 GMT References: <491fffd5.1a4d7@cicada.engin.umich.edu> <2080@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <365@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <366@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <16ai029B9byy01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Organization: Marshall University Lines: 34 In article <16ai029B9byy01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>, kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes: > In article <366@ntpdvp1.UUCP> sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn) writes: >>> (Ken Presting) responds: >>> > Fantasy and ritual are the appropriate models for thought . . . >> >>Why are rituals more appropriate? Because they are phenomenological, >>as opposed to being logical? This is what I think you are saying. > > The attribute of rituals that gets my attention is their *concreteness*, > combined with their *futility*. (Ahh, that explains everything! :-) > > Not that all rituals are always futile - this is precisely why ritual > is fascinating. Why would grown organisms with important things to..... Isn't this what Skinner called "adventitious conditioning"? Skinner's hypothesis was that ritual behavior arose when an operant made a false stimulus-response correlation. We do it all the time, with behaviors like wearing our "lucky hat" when fishing or such like. I've wondered if we couldn't extend the concept of adventitious conditioning to a behavioral explanation of religion in human culture. Religious ritual is nothing more than a stimulus-response correlation that does not correlate with the actual s-r sequence [cf. Monty Python's "Life of Brian" as an example]. Statistics is one more belief system, as the original message pointed out. A statistician *believes* that his/her results *probably* are 95% not due to mere chance [p<.05], but the statistician cannot *know* if the results are random or not. There are alternative ways of knowing [or thinking we know], and statistical inference is one such way--it is not the *only* such way. -- edm002@muvms3.bitnet,Marshall University Fred R. Reenstjerna | Life is like a 'B' movie. You 400 Hal Greer Blvd | don't want to leave in the middle, Huntington, WV 25755 | but you don't want to see it again. (304)696 - 2905 | ---Ted Turner, 1990